NOTE: This backstory applies to all of the Ninja Cows games, though the Ninja Cow Run game only depicts the portion of the story where the Ninja Cows steal the magic potion from the Voodoo Queen’s tomb and run away with the Zombie Hoard in hot pursuit.
As our story begins, the Ninja Cows are just a group of ordinary cattle from diverse backgrounds who live quietly on a farm outside New Orleans, near the bayou swamp. The bulls are named Henry, El Toro and Sweet Brown; the cows are Copper and Matilda.
The property is owned by Farmer Green, who lives there with his wife, their two small children, and the barnyard animals, including several pigs, a horse, the cows, a few chickens, a rooster, and a goat. Nearby, in the swamp, lives Big Mama Gator, a one-eyed voodoo lady.
One day, the farm is in an uproar – the farmer’s wife is complaining that her best kitchen knife has gone missing. The farmer is missing a bucket of blue paint, a ladder and a brush. In addition, when the henhouse is opened for the morning, the rooster, Big Red, is nowhere to be found. The hens (Henrietta, Prudence, Tillie, Buttercup and Dixie) are frantic to find him. They enlist the aid of the other farm animals in the search. The pigs merely laugh and refuse to move from their comfortable naps in the mud.
Eventually the missing rooster is found in the bayou swamp. He has been sacrificed in a voodoo ceremony, and is surrounded by feathers, blood, bones, and voodoo drawings. In the soft ground can be seen the prints of small, cloven hooves. The hens become hysterical, thinking the hoof prints are those of the devil.
The cows are suspicious, and wonder if the pigs have been up to something. They especially suspect Napoleon, the leader of the pigs, and his henchmen, the Curlytail triplets Hamlet, Nero and Pompey. That gang is usually up to no good and are known to steal eggs and any food they can get when nobody is watching. The cows help bury the rooster and return to the farm, keeping a close eye on the pigs, who seem unsurprised to hear that the rooster is dead.
That night, when the moon rises, zombies invade the barnyard, terrorizing the other animals and driving the farmer and his family to seek refuge in the barn, where they are defended by the cows and Boxer the horse. The pigs, significantly, are not attacked by the zombies, and they all run into the farmer’s house and barricade it against the zombies. Since the rooster is dead, there is no crowing to drive off the zombies, and they only leave when sunrise approaches. Just after dawn, the cows notice that Hamlet, one of the pigs, is busily painting all the doors and windows of the farmhouse with indigo blue. When they try to talk to him, he laughs and runs inside the house.
When the farmer and his family attempt to return to their house, they find that the pigs have locked up all the doors and windows and will not let them in.
Muriel, the goat, who is old and wise, advises the cows to go consult the voodoo-woman in the swamp, Mama Gator. They venture into the Bayou and find an ancient alligator living in a little hut that is supported on giant chicken feet and is decorated with Spanish moss, bats and skulls with glowing eyes. The hut can move and wander around the swamp.
Mama Gator consults her tarot cards and advises them that the pigs have murdered the rooster in order to summon the zombies to help them take over the farm. They have painted the doors and windows with blue indigo, a plant which protects against “haunts” and other magical creatures such as zombies.
In order to stop the zombies, the cows will have to go to the tomb of the voodoo queen, Marie Laveau, in the Saint Louis Cemetery in New Orleans and steal her magic potion (made of werewolf spit, graveyard dust and essence of sun-dried vampire), which will enable the cows to have the speed and strength to outrun and outfight the zombies. In addition, Mama Gator will train the cows in special ninja fighting skills so they can overcome the zombies and protect the farm.
The cows arrive at the Saint Louis Cemetery and go to the tomb of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, on the “other side of midnight”, which is the witching hour. They mark the letter “x” all over the tomb with chalk, light a bunch of candles and pour a bottle of rum over the tomb. The tomb opens up, revealing the glowing bottle of magic potion.
The cows grab it, drink some, and run away with the bottle, as the Zombie Hoard rises from the surrounding tombs and pursues the cows through the graveyard, the forest, the swamp and beyond. The cows can now magically run faster, as the potion has given them super-speed. The zombies pursue because they need the potion also, since zombies are normally very slow and lumbering, and need the potion to run faster. It will take all the cows’ speed and skills to avoid becoming the Zombies’ lunch.
To make matters worse, the angry Voodoo Queen has unleashed the World Eater, a gigantic, worm-like monster which is also pursuing the cows, devouring the terrain behind them as it goes. Trees, houses, hills, rocks and rivers: the World Eater swallows them all, leaving nothing in its wake but chaos and the void. The Ninja Cows must keep going forward, because with the World Eater right behind them, there is certainly no turning back.
And so Henry, Copper, Sweet Brown, Matilda and El Toro became the Ninja Cows. They now spend their days ninja training with Mama Gator and their nights protecting the farm from the zombies.
